‘Tis the Season for Tree-Growing Town : Years of Care Culminate in Christmas Joy

Thousands of Christmas trees cluster on Oregon’s hillsides, soaked by rain, growing greener and lusher by the drop.

Here in tiny, pristine Monroe, which calls itself “the Christmas tree capital of Oregon,” they are also big business, drawing more and more operators each year.

The crunch of changing tax laws, bug infestation, apocalyptic weather, frenzied competition--none of it seems to matter. Enterprising souls see different shades of green in each tree. Some call it the color of money.

Big dealers such as Monroe Tree Farms, and little dealers such as Campbell Trees of Oregon, tangle here in annual competition. Each in its own way does well.

Regardless of who grows and sells--regardless of how big or little they or the trees are--the product all ends up at pretty much the same place: somebody’s home at Christmas.

One of the country’s biggest markets for Oregon Christmas trees is Southern California, and most of its trees come from the fields of Monroe.

They are grown for six or seven years, then slashed from their roots by grim men wielding chain saws, tied up three dozen at a time in giant rope slings, yanked from the ground by helicopters and dumped unceremoniously at a central location miles away.

Prepared for Shipping

That is barely the beginning.

Workers wearing yellow rain gear--who carry out their tasks like assembly-line hands--gather round a long spider-like machine called a baler. The trees are stacked in bales and run through the machine, which thins them and makes them easier for shipping.

They are loaded onto an elevator and into a truck for hauling to various places--Connecticut, Texas, Nebraska and, of course, Southern California.

If tree entrepreneurs evoke images of Scrooge, they also express hope that those on the receiving end of all their labor are happy with the trees lighting up their living rooms. Without the feeling that a happy payoff waits on the other end, some say they just couldn’t cope with the stress of the autumn months, pulling long hours in the rain and cold, realizing that after the season is over, many will return to a chronic condition--unemployment.

Monroe Tree Farms does its biggest dealing with large chain stores, such as Home Club, Price Club and Sav-On Osco Drugs, spread throughout Southern California. Other clients include Lucky Markets, based in Buena Park, and, until its recent demise, the Gemco chain.

Six years ago, Monroe Tree Farms abandoned its wholesale-retail operation in favor of just growing trees. Until then, it had operated a lot in Buena Park, at the corner of Stanton and Orangethorpe. It nows sell exclusively to large wholesalers and small retailers in every state except Alaska.

At the little end of the tree-growing scale is Campbell Trees of Oregon, a one-man Walter Mitty-like operation. Gary Campbell, 38, a native of Long Beach who grew up in northern San Diego County, is the business.

Campbell, who moved to Ashland, Ore., to be closer to the business, runs his own lots in Vista and Oceanside. He drives to Southern California every November in a rambling pickup, making the 800-mile trip in 21 hours, stopping only for coffee and gas.

In late autumn, during peak periods, he said, “I wake up at 5 a.m. and go to bed around 1 or 2 a.m. I can’t help it. I have to do it or it won’t get done.”

In a good year--and he’s been at it now for six--Campbell sells about 4,000 trees. They’re culled from 200 acres of land, all leased and lying near Monroe, not far from Monroe Tree Farms. (Monroe is 20 miles northwest of Eugene and the campus of the University of Oregon.)

Not surprisingly, the town’s biggest business is Monroe Tree Farms, which employs about 250 locals during the fall. Bob (Doc) Sievers, 38, is the son of Bob M. Sievers, who founded Monroe Tree Farms in 1954. The family once lived in Oceanside--Bob Jr. was born in San Diego--but moved 17 years ago for the same reason as Campbell: to be closer to the trees.

Booming Business

The Sieverses’ business has boomed and now has about 5 million trees growing on 3,000 acres, half of which they own. (The other half is leased.) They sell about 250,000 a year, according to Sievers Jr., one-third of the management team. The number of employees rises to 60 during the summer, when shearing takes place, and to 250 around November for cutting, baling and selling.

But what’s great for business can make a young man feel old.

“It seems like I’ve been working for my dad forever,” said a weary Sievers, at the close of a recent workday.

“I started full-time in 1971. It seems like I’ve been in the Christmas tree business since I could walk, from wholesale-retail to the growing end. This time of year is really rough. We have about six to seven weeks to get the product in. Otherwise, we’re sunk.”

Monroe and other local communities are thrilled to see “tree season” start. Most of the 250 who end up working for the Sievers are unemployed the rest of the year--victims of Oregon’s recession. Christmas trees offer momentary refuge from welfare lines and food stamps.

Rex Burdett, 21, is unemployed, except in November and December, when he works for the Sievers family. His older brother also is unemployed.

Their mother, Myrtle Burdett, 57, works for the tree operation as well, and has for 16 years. She runs the time clock, but in the old days she baled, tied and cut trees, “just like the young ‘uns. I could keep up with them now,” she said, “if they’d just let me.”

Working in Rain and Cold

Work in the fields is hard, almost numbing. Rain and cold are constant. Around 1976, which she called the zenith of the Christmas tree wars, Myrtle Burdett logged 56 straight days outside. Those were days when full-time help was at a premium. But jobs have become scarce, the Burdetts noted, and many of the workers now at Monroe Tree Farms are immigrants from south of the border brought in by private contractors.

Gary Campbell says the little guy has a rough time competing against bigger growers like Monroe Tree Farms, which sells mainly to corporate outlets.

“They can buy up a field of 40,000 to 50,000 trees,” he said, “and charge $20 a tree, at most. I have to charge up to $32.95 a tree, so I get pinched. They can charge a little and make a lot.”

Campbell hires about half a dozen people during peak season, and a helicopter to transport the trees one or two days a year, at a cost of 35 cents a tree. He shivers at the thought that helicopter costs may soon leap to 75 cents a tree, as early as next year.

As a small operator, Campbell worries about how bad weather, gypsy moths and other insects can affect his business. He has more to lose than bigger operators, he said, since they have greater resources with which to fight.

Worry About Tax Laws

Sievers said big operators worry more about the upcoming change in tax laws--specifically, the shift in capital gains starting next month. Landowners had been able to shield Christmas trees and other timber as tax shelters.

“Now on every tree we sell,” Sievers said, “we’re going to pay the full cut (of taxable income). All I can say to that is ‘ouch.’ ”

“Ouch” may be what consumers say when tree prices rise next Christmas--a fact most people in these parts say you can count on.

But “ouch” is seldom the response when Christmas finally draws near in homes across America.

On a bright afternoon the day after Thanksgiving, Ron and Gail Ridgway bought a Douglas fir from Campbell’s lot in Vista and drove it to their home in Oceanside to decorate it with their three daughters, ages 10, 7 and 4.

In the twinkle of soft red and blue light, it seemed clear that to the little people at the end of the Christmas tree trail, it hardly matters whether the business that grew the tree is big, little or in between.